Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the “raver”. Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the “raver” is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a “raver”.

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you’re a free journalist, don’t you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don’t you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don’t you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what “all the world knows” (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the “raver” is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the “truth”; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qaida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. “We disrupted al-Qaida, causing them to run,” Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named “Operation Lightning Hammer” in Iraq’s Diyala province. “Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them.” And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qaida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush’s more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It’s not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93’s debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I’m not talking about the crazed “research” of David Icke’s Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the “raver” bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be “fraudulent or deceptive”.

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard “explosions” in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let’s claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA’s list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose “Islamic” advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the “Fajr” prayer to be included in Atta’s letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious “war on terror” which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush’s happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that “we’re an empire now – we create our own reality”. True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

Excellent report by him- sticking to the provables. The only thing I don't agree with is him saying that they couldn't pull it off without bungling it. Well they did make mistakes- ones that led people to question the official story. So he was right indirectly in stating that they can't do anything right, but doesn't want to claim it.

Our biggest problem with getting the truth is the indifference of the average American, as they are more interested in seeing the latest bargains coming from China at their local Wal-Mart than worrying about reality.

Reality? There's a new reality show this fall I gotta see- it's just SO real!

_________________Completely sane world
madness the only freedom

An ability to see both sides of a question
one of the marks of a mature mind

I agree with DO.g's. Just because the bungling people of the Bush administration have made so many mistakes doesn't mean they weren't able to plow two planes into the Towers. And as he said, mistakes were made there too, but the Towers still fell.

Call me a raver if you will, but if this administration didn't actually pull this off, they at least knew it was coming and did nothing to stop it.

DO.g's - "Our biggest problem with getting the truth is the indifference of the average American, as they are more interested in seeing the latest bargains coming from China at their local Wal-Mart than worrying about reality."

Yeah .. Some people are coming around thanks to bloggers and etc. Just not enough. The information war is where it is at right now. For a time, they totally controlled the flow of information that reached the populace, but the net has changed that somewhat. Now, if we only had a way to shut off their TVs and direct their computers.

I've heard a lot lately about the MSM losing money. I really feel sorry for them, don't you? What they should be saying is -- We can't control the information that people see. Boo Hoo Hoo ..

Google is totally owned and controlled. We need some new search engines.

The reality TV stuff is anything but reality. Distraction TV would be a more accurate description. Ever think about what could be considered distraction? The MSM will keep pounding away at the minds of the populace with junk as long as the clueless go on watching it.

SI--

_________________You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the thought police.

I've heard a lot lately about the MSM losing money. I really feel sorry for them, don't you? What they should be saying is -- We can't control the information that people see. Boo Hoo Hoo ..

But they sure do keep trying. I didn't listen at all to 'news broadcasts' but recently believed things like the miners would be covered well. I found the msm is just as good at twisting everything as has been reported here and other sites on the net.

It grates on my nerves to even hear these people, knowing they lie for profit. They are so good at it, they have to lie about everything--it is the backbone of their existance.

. . .while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent

Interesting how he makes the jump from "unanswered questions" to "conspiracy." Also interesting that he doesn't feel the need to take responsibility for his life as a journalist; if someone else orders him to restrict himself to "the Middle East correspondent," then that's good enough for him. Not exactly a sign of greatness, to say the least. More like "it's not my problem, therefore it isn't real."

Well, we all have our problems. Perhaps he would like to trade his current worries with someone "in Manhattan" who was jumping to their death that day?

Quote:

My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

That argument reflects an extreme ignorance of undisclosed special access projects. The real cabal does not exist in the form of government as we've been taught to understand it.

Not to mention that what has been "screwed up" in our perception is exactly what someone else wants to happen -- global profiteering. Chaos in the middle East makes certain people infinitely wealthy. The international bankers keep the books on each side. It's been the way of the world since the beginning. Who doesn't know that?

In conclusion, this reporter's attitude is the challenge faced by 9/11 Truth. Some people just aren't open to the universe they live in.

But I would still like to know how three thousand homicides, four plane crashes, and an "imaginary" war on terror don't warrant further investigation from a nation of people who are supposedly free.

But I would still like to know how three thousand homicides, four plane crashes, and an "imaginary" war on terror don't warrant further investigation from a nation of people who are supposedly free.

Good observations, GR...and it's attitudes like this journalist's that cause us to be less and less free because, without a truthfully informed populous, we aren't going to have the few freedoms we have left.

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

. . . without a truthfully informed populous, we aren't going to have the few freedoms we have left.

That's just it. Today we find ourselves so at the mercy of someone else, legions of "others," out "there" somewhere, for true information that it's rotted our souls to the core, to a state of helplessness, even absurdity at times.

I've come to see that personal, not political, self-improvement is perhaps the most crucial key to unlocking the darker vaults of truth inhabiting our experience today. Today, not in a book on media criticism, not in a book on 9/11, not in a book on the Federal Reserve, but in a self-improvement book (the commercially-accepted moniker), I came across the following quote:

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."--George Bernard Shaw

Today, more than ever before, we need the moulins of self-improvement to undermine the glacier of corruption that has possessed our lives.